THE WILDERNESS
[p. 432] THE WILDERNESS
Exodus 15: 22 - 25; Numbers 21:4 - 9; Numbers 21:16-18
The subject I desire to bring before you is “THE WILDERNESS”; for though we so often speak of the wilderness, perhaps there is no subject (I speak for myself) we know so little about according to God. I have read the passage from Exodus 15 to show the way you enter the wilderness, where you prove that the flesh profiteth nothing, where you learn yourself: while in Numbers 21 you are brought to see a new state. You learn the incompetency of the flesh, of your own state, in Exodus 15, and you are given a new state by the Spirit of God, as seen typically in Numbers 21. But firstly, and it is of the deepest importance, you cannot enter the wilderness except you have been delivered from the judgment of death, and are on the other side of the Red Sea. You may sometimes hear a person speaking of the trials of the wilderness who has never entered the wilderness. If you have entered the wilderness, you have entered it through death, and you are clear of death in the sight of God.
In Romans 4, when you believe that God has raised Christ from the dead, you are justified by faith, you can joy in God. But consequent on this every believer finds that he is sinful. In Romans 6 and 7 you find that the first thing you are occupied with is relief from sinfulness. Hence the true character of the wilderness is death to the will of the flesh; it is Marah; properly, the water of the Red Sea. I feel, in myself, how little one accepts the wilderness in its true character. You have been delivered from the judgment on man by the death and resurrection of Christ here in this place, where you were under the judgment of God, and now this place is a wilderness [p. 433] to you; there is nothing for you here naturally. If you maintain your new ground through grace, it must be a place of death to the flesh. You can only maintain your new ground by death. Hence the first thing your conscience is occupied with is your sinfulness. Hence you read in 1 Peter 4: 1: “Arm yourselves likewise with the same mind, for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin”: you must not gratify yourself; when you have suffered in the flesh you have ceased from sin. Many are surprised when they find, consequent on the joy of being justified in the sight of God, that they are so distressed by their own state. And why? Because they are not drinking death. But it sweetens death to see that Christ was in it for you. Nothing else will. Though you know that your sins are forgiven, yet you find that you commit sins; this is simply because you do not arm yourself with the same mind, “for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin”: that is from doing sin. This experience gives you the character of the wilderness. We speak familiarly of the wilderness, but have we really entered it? There is nothing for the saved soul in the wilderness but God, and if you really apprehended this, you would respond, That is a great deal. You will find that Christ trod this path; He made a path through the wilderness. Manna can now be found on every leaf, for even the smallest thing. In His public course He said, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head”. The manna is, that He was here, a Man, God the spring of all His ways, He learnt nothing from man; He was born of a woman, but we read of Him. “I was cast upon thee from the womb”. As has been said, It was not anything He found here, but what He brought here. The more you study His path, the more you will understand what the wilderness is to you from God. But it is very different to us, because we have been [p. 434] alienated from God, and we could not be relieved of the judgment on us but by death. Hence, as you get out of death through Christ’s death, you must accept His death as the only deliverance from the old man; that is the bitter water; and the bitter water is made sweet when you connect it with Christ’s death. The great education of the wilderness at first is, that you should know yourself, what is in your heart. Many have not learnt themselves. When you have learned yourself you will say, “In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing”. If any one can say that with a true heart, be assured he knows something of the wilderness. Your most amiable quality has no good thing in it. Now you have learnt that nothing can come from your own side. That is the first thing.
The great characteristic of any one truly in the wilderness is dependence. Turn to Deuteronomy 8: 2: “Thou shalt remember all the way” — mark how definite that is; all your history, remember it — “which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee.... And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live”. The Lord, when He went into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, quotes this scripture. He needed not to go into the wilderness to learn dependence, for He was in circumstances the contrast to Adam in the garden of Eden. Adam was surrounded by every mark of God’s goodness and care for him, but in the midst of it all he gave way. Here is the Lord, forty days without food; He takes the lowest place, there is no intimation of God’s care for Him, but Satan comes to Him and says, so to speak, Use your own power. It is there where we fail. Be assured there is no one who has either material or [p. 435] mental resource, who is not in danger of using it, and when he uses it he is not walking by faith. That is the first temptation, and if you yield to the first, you are a prey to the rest. The first is that you leave the place of dependence, and therefore it is the man of natural resource who really wants faith most. Satan says, “If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread”; but the Lord replies, “It is written that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God”. Who can describe what the manna is? One can adore at the sight of it, and seek to appropriate it; but it is a wonderful thing; the One who had all power took the place of dependence, and found all His resource in God. There was nothing to be found for Him in this poor world. He quotes this verse; I read it to show how we are taught; “That he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only”. What you are brought to practically is dependence. The highest point you can arrive at is dependence. Dependence is what should mark us here. There is nothing for a believer here. It is a life of absolute dependence on God. God can show how He can be gracious to you in the wilderness, and therefore there are “twelve wells of water and threescore and ten palm trees”. But that is not from the wilderness, but what God can give you in it. The only support in the wilderness is the manna and the water from the smitten rock. I consider that the manna is the grace of Christ as He walked here. At the same time, while the grace is there, I do not think you appropriate the grace until you accept death with Him.
I ask any conscientious person, Were you not first occupied about your sinfulness even after you had peace? Though I am afraid what is called peace is not always true peace. Forgiveness is not peace; peace is when there is not a cloud, when the enemies are gone. If you want to know what peace is, go and [p. 436] ask a soldier, Have you succeeded? Oh! he replies, we crushed the foe. That is peace. “Who hath abolished death and brought life and incorruptibility to light through the gospel”: that is peace — that is the Red Sea.
Now you enter the wilderness; you have got out of judgment through death, you then enter the wilderness; and as you accept death with Christ you are in the wilderness. I cannot go into detail, but I commend to you Romans 6, because there the question of dead to sin is raised. It goes further than Peter; but then chapter 7 shows (what was really the education of Israel in the wilderness) that the flesh is unmendably bad. And we all have to be brought to say with truth, “In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.... Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord”. The wilderness is where the life of Jesus is known concurrent with the dying of Jesus.
Before passing on, let me make one remark — Israel encountered opposition there. When you have got clear of Satan as Pharaoh, he opposes you as Amalek; that is, to prevent you from taking the wilderness condition. If you look at the history of young Christians, you will find that they are diverted from taking the wilderness condition by some worldly pressure; that is the opposition of Satan as Amalek; he acts against you in order that you may find something here; if you resist him, you will not be carried away. Take an example, Peter went into the high priest’s house; he was invited in, and might have thought he was favoured. But it was a terrible moment; Satan had gained the day. Alas! if you know yourself, and have read your own history, it is not once nor twice that you have thought, when a snare was laid for you, that is a good opening of which I may avail myself. Like Lot, when he saw the green fields towards Sodom, why should not I avail myself [p. 437] of them? he thought. Woe betide you if you do! If you knew yourself better, you would not trust yourself.
“I have nothing to seek nor to choose,
I’ve no thought in the waste to abide,
I have naught to regret nor to lose”. (139:1)
Now let us turn to Numbers 21. There Israel learnt that they are irretrievably bad; they speak against God and against Moses. Let me call your attention to the way this was manifested. Israel sought to stand for the Lord before they were qualified; you cannot stand for the Lord until you have come to His side.
In Numbers 21 you get the new state. You have first, as we have seen, to learn the unprofitableness of your flesh, that there is no escape from it but as you accept death with Christ; then you are brought to say, “In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing”. You learn that “the Son of man must be lifted up”; He who knew no sin made sin for us. And then, as in Romans 6: 6, “our old man is crucified with him”. You have learnt the bitterness of the serpent’s bite; you have cried out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” It has been said, you never could be out of Romans 7 until you were first in it. Some think it is a hopeful state; I think it is a most miserable state.
When the day of everlasting blessedness dawns upon your heart then you say, “I thank God through Jesus Christ”. Then a new state is entered on; you speak no longer about yourself, no longer about the weakness of the flesh and how you can get relief; that is the first thing, and I am not objecting to it, for you have to learn that you are irretrievably bad, but having learned it, you are cast upon Christ. Hence you get in Romans 8 what I believe is prefigured by the well in Numbers 21, “Whereof the Lord spake unto Moses, Gather the people together and I will give them water”. This is the first time in Scripture that I know of that it is said, “I will GIVE them water”; the water followed them before. And if you ask me what is meant by the type of the water from the smitten rock, I believe it is the grace of Christ which meets us; I have no doubt that when we look to Him we obtain His grace to enable us to act in the circumstances we are in.
But I have digressed. Now you can reckon yourself dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus. Suffering from the serpent’s bite you have looked to Christ who knew no sin made sin for us. Hence we read, “I will give them water”. In Romans 8: 1, we read, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus”; you are not occupied now with the sinfulness of the flesh, but you are in the power of the Spirit of God — “for the law of the Spirit of life” — mind you, it is the Spirit of life — “in Christ Jesus hath made me free” — (a wonderful moment!) — “from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of flesh of sin” — the antitype of the brazen serpent — “and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”. Sins, transgressions, are forgiven, but sin is condemned, removed in judgment from God’s eye. Now as we read in the end of Romans 8 you are not occupied about yourself, but “For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter”. You now stand for the Lord; you enter on your new history in the wilderness. You, like Israel, now stand for the Lord; they encounter Balaam, a new and very dangerous power of opposition. Balaam succeeds by drawing you into the society of unbelievers. Of course, you have to meet them in business and otherwise, or you must needs go out of the world; but I speak of social intercourse with them, joining with them in their tastes and pleasures. There the Corinthians [p. 439] failed, and hence the apostle writes to them, “What communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? .. . Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you”. In Revelation 2 you find that at Pergamos the church suffered from Balaam; consequently the reward to the overcomer is, “I will give to eat of the hidden manna”. May we know more of “the hidden manna”, the wonderful way that the blessed One walked here according to the pleasure of God.
Your new course is detailed in the epistle to the Hebrews, you “run with patience the race”. Every obstacle in your way is not discomfiture but an opportunity for faith, according to the last clause of Galatians 2: 20, “The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me”. That is the new course; you are now led by a new power, hence every obstruction is only an occasion for the manifestation of His divine power. You are in the race, though still in the wilderness; you know the power of faith and can say, “By my God have I leaped over a wall”. You are now in the power of the Spirit of God; you entered the wilderness to learn what the flesh is, now being dead to sin, you are in the power of the Spirit of God and your course is simply to run the race set before you, overcoming every obstruction. As an illustration, you are like one seeing a mansion five or six miles off, and your one object is to reach it. The mansion is where Christ is; hence “looking off unto Jesus”. It is a wonderful course, and like Israel, you are victorious all along it; over Og, king of Bashan, and Sihon, king of the Amorites. God appears for you, and in a wonderful way displays His power.
I turn now to Romans 12 and 13, to present to you your responsibility in the wilderness. When I speak [p. 440] of responsibility I do not refer to church fellowship, I refer to you as individuals. I commend these chapters to you; I glance briefly at some points. The first is, your body is the Lord’s. The next is that you are responsible with reference to the church, to be faithful to the grace committed to you, from the highest gifts down to showing “mercy with cheerfulness”. Your responsibility is, first to Christ, second to the church, and then, in chapter 13, to the powers that be, and to your neighbour. There is no such thing ever contemplated in Scripture as levelling. I need not say, we are all one in the church; but in the wilderness there is no levelling. You are subjects, though not citizens; you obey the powers that be implicitly, and in your dealings with one another you are to love your neighbour as yourself, in business and everything else; you owe no man anything, and you render honour to whom honour is due. You are on the earth a stranger and a pilgrim, running a race; you are to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof”. I need not dwell more on this. Anyone who desires to learn will study these chapters in order to apprehend his responsibility in the wilderness. You cannot appropriate the grace of Christ for your walk here until you know first that you live in Christ’s life outside it. The order is “I am crucified with Christ” (in type, Numbers 21), “but Christ liveth in me” it is not merely that He has given you life, but He lives in you — a much more wonderful grace. And then, “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”.
So much for your responsibility in the wilderness as in Romans 12 and 13. I will not detain you long, but I cannot conclude without turning for a moment to the epistle to the Philippians. I can only refer to the subject of the chapters, a mere sketch of it. The great difficulty in understanding this epistle is that it is the [p. 441] experience of a heavenly man down here. Many read it as if it were practice, but I believe it is the experience of a heavenly man, and you cannot have experience without knowledge.
In the first chapter the apostle longs to depart and to be with Christ; no doubt he felt the pressure of prison-life; he had lost everything he naturally valued in this world, even Jerusalem on which his heart was set for God; he had nothing now personally to keep him here; he was a heavenly man in the wilderness, hence he longs to depart and be with Christ. But it is better for the church that he should remain, so he will remain; but his expectation, as always, so now also is that Christ shall be magnified in his body, whether it be by life or by death. How beautiful!
In chapter 2 the subject is the low place the Lord came down to from the highest in order to be a servant. He made Himself of no reputation, emptied Himself. He who being in the form of God, thought it not rapine to be equal with God, became a man, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Paul was a prisoner in Rome, and he was ready to go down to any degree to be a servant.
Chapter 3 is more within our reach, as I might say. You prefer Christ to anything of man; all that is gain to you you count but loss for Christ; you count all but rubbish that you may win Christ. There is a connection with chapter 1; Paul there longs to depart and be with Him, because to die would be gain; hence now he says, as it were, I am, not going to Him, but I want to gain Him now. This chapter ends with a very important experience. In the epistle to the Ephesians there is nothing about the Lord’s coming. Why? Because you are in company with Christ in heavenly places. But when you find yourself in the wilderness, you as a heavenly man would say, “Our conversation is in heaven”; we are subjects on the earth, we are [p. 442] citizens of heaven. That is the characteristic of a man in the wilderness, he is a subject here, but a citizen of heaven. This would settle a great many questions. “Our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself”. The moment Christ rises off the Father’s throne, it is in the power by which He will “subdue all things to himself”, and the very first wave of that power is towards the saints. And this Paul was looking for. The heavenly man in the wilderness looks for this.
Chapter 4 is more within our practical experience. Here is Paul, a man in prison, and he tells us that he has learnt in whatsoever state he is, to be satisfied; he knows how to be abased and how to abound; whether he is in the lowest position, or in affluence, he is the same in either. A man in very low circumstances is naturally depressed, and when he is prosperous he is elated; but the apostle can say, I have learnt in all things to be satisfied. Our translators could not catch the idea, and they put in the word ‘content’ it is “satisfied”.
I trust many in this room will feel that the wilderness is a wonderful subject. I may not have helped you much, yet I believe you will get great help if you simply accept that you are delivered from the judgment of death by the death of Christ, and that you expect nothing but Marah — death to the old man in this world, and yet abounding grace from God. “When he putteth forth his own sheep he goeth before them”. Thus you learn the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in a wonderfully real way; how it meets you at every turn; you ought not to enter on anything here except you have previously gathered the manna. Then you know “My grace is sufficient for thee”. I believe as [p. 443] you are real and true, you will not move without it; so that you would address yourself to every new demand according to Psalm 23; you have been lying down in green pastures and led beside the still waters. The figure here is not to feed; a cow does not lie down until it is full. You survey the green pastures; you lie down to be assured of the resources you have in God. Then you are led into the paths of righteousness, because you are in a scene of corruption. Next, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil”. And eventually, He prepares a table for you in the wilderness, an expression of His favour in the very place where you have been slighted.
I thank the Lord for allowing me to speak on this subject, though I have felt how very limited is my knowledge of it; yet I am thankful that our hearts have been led to it, and I trust to Him that many of you will be helped to understand better your true path upon the earth as those who have been redeemed from all iniquity through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, for His name’s sake.